Linh Ngo was a camper at Camp Odyssey's first year. She was involved in many aspects of Camp at various times from 1990-1998 in camp facilitating, fundraising, recruitment/selection, training, and curriculum development. 

Linh was born in Vietnam with Chinese ancestry. As a child refugee, she arrived in the United States in 1980, and grew up in Portland, Oregon. Growing up in suburb schools, she always felt like she was too Asian to fit in. At home, she was too American. Camp Odyssey was the first place that told her she does fit in this world and where she began to find her voice. Linh became a social worker because of people like Dennis Morrow and Tillie MakePeace. She is a product of Portland Community College and the University of Washington. Linh earned her Masters of Social Work at the University of Chicago, working in Brooklyn, New York for 3 years until she returned to Seattle. She has more than 11 years of licensed professional counseling experience working with diverse populations, including recently working as a college counselor for the University of Pennsylvania and Green River Community College. She currently provides mental health services at a school-based teen health clinic.

Outside of chairing the Steering Committee of Camp Odyssey, Linh co-facilitated leadership and diversity trainings for the Asian Community Leadership Forum (ACLF), Vietnamese Friendship Association (VFA) and Japanese American Council League (JACL). In addition, she serves on the VFA advisory council for the Community Action Research and Empowerment project where youth and elders work together to assess the strengths and needs of the Vietnamese community.

Willie Raw is a founding member of Camp Odyssey 2.0 and has held the positions of Fund Development Chair and Camper Recruitment Chair since early 2010.  He was a camper at the first camp in 1990, served three years as a youth leader, two as youth leader coordinator, and one year as the Camp Coordinator with NCCJ.  He served as a facilitator, mentor and trainer for over 500 youth and adults during his years at Camp Odyssey from 1991-1999.  Willie has been working to get youth to camp, having met and spoke with hundreds of youth over the last six months in high schools, youth groups, over the phone, and in person.

Willie is from Oregon!  He grew up in Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River.  He is a 7th generation Oregonian and his family still owns and operates a tree farm in Kings Valley, Oregon, in the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range, on a portion of the original land claim from 1853.  As a high school student, he was Student Body President, an All-State Athlete and participated in the Congressional Page Program, working for Les Aucoin in Washington D.C.  He is a graduate of Oregon State University, like his parents and grandparents before him, and earned a Bachelors of Science in Political Science from OSU in 1997.   He is currently a student at Marylhurst University, in the Conflict Resolution and Mediation program.  Willie attributes his interest in social justice work to his years at Camp Odyssey, and credits Camp Odyssey Staff for providing a foundation of understanding, both internally and externally; for connecting his head and his heart.

Willie has held positions with Green Drake Engineering and Federal Communications Group as a project lead for both fixed position RF networks and cabling installations.  After many years of telecom work, he made the transition to working with youth as a licensed soccer coach.  He has been a staff coach for Oregon Episcopal School (OES) for 8 seasons and has served as a coach for Willamette United Soccer Club, Portland Indoor Soccer Center and the American Youth Soccer Organization.  During his time with OES, he has also served as a substitute teacher for the Middle School.  Willie currently works for Janus Youth Programs at the Buckman House, an independent living program for young men.

Nicole Potter, who was raised by liberal hippies in a rural, conservative small-town in Oregon, was always sensitive to the racial and class divides around her. A strong connection with her mom’s Native American family shaped her cultural identity, and coupled with a Norma Rae-ish personality, led her to become involved in community service and social activism at an early age, completing 2 service terms of Americorps starting when she was still in high school. A friend who had attended the first Camp Odyssey encouraged Nicole to apply, and with her attendance in 1993, solidified her passion for diversity issues and social justice.

For the next 8 years Nicole stayed involved in Camp, working her way up through many positions, eventually serving as a “Penzoil” member, responsible for overseeing most aspects and ensuring smooth operations. During the same time, her Americorps experience lead to several jobs in the social service sector, and although passionate about her work, she wanted a change of pace. Pursuing a long-time interest, she became a makeup artist, and currently based out of New York City, her work is seen in magazines, on television, films, and the runways from NY to Paris.

For someone who had been well educated in diversity, New York provided an advanced degree. Lessons were hidden around every corner, in every cab, bodega and interaction, challenging almost every notion she’d held previously. Her personal identity even faced a crisis when she started to see herself as more Multi-Cultural, resulting from people’s disbelief of her heritage based on her Caucasian appearance. Nicole’s work takes her around the world, further educating her on people and countries she’d always dreamed of seeing, and this constant learning has steered her full circle, stepping up in late 2009 with several alumni to form The Piece, overseeing the revitalization of Camp Odyssey.

In addition to serving on The Piece’s founding Steering Committee, Nicole has drawn upon her background to complement her career, having written a book on cross-cultural beauty and lifestyle tips, and is in early stages of forming a worker-owned cooperative agency. Her goal is to split her time equally between coasts and she is exhilarated to be restarting a program that has been so influential in her life!

Doug Honma is a recent graduate of Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, specializing in education policy, health policy, and public finance. He now returns to the Pacific Northwest to take the next step in his career having managed evaluation data collection for community and family development initiatives (White Center Community Development Association/Annie E. Casey Foundation Making Connections Initiative), coordinated leadership development programs (Asian Pacific Community Leadership Foundation), and conducted market research for a number of public agencies and political campaigns (EMC Research and PRR). Doug has also conducted or assisted research on a number of topics through the course of his graduate studies including: health care reform, No Child Left Behind implementation, special education inclusion and finance, charter school law, racial diversity and school choice, and the management of state-held debt. 

Since joining the Camp Odyssey community in 1996 as a camper, youth leader, facilitator, and head of operations, Doug has also assumed a number of leadership roles within the Pacific Northwest's Asian Pacific Island community. He has served in multiple capacities within the Japanese American Citizens League - including a term as president of its Seattle Chapter at age 25and as a member of JACL's National Youth/Student Council during the mids of undergraduate studies. He has also served on the board of the Asian Pacific Islander Community Leadership Foundation.

Doug attributes many of his community and professional accomplishments to the self-awareness and interpersonal insights developed at Camp Odyssey. In 2009, he returned to active involvement by joining the alumni effort to rebuild the program. Following his camper experience of Odyssey VI, he returned for the next 4 camps as a youth leader (1997 & 1998), facilitator (1999), and operations team coordinator (2000). 

In addition to his recently earned Master of Public Administration, Doug earned his Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Washing. He currently resides alternately in Milwaukie, Oregon (suburb of Portland) and Redmond, Washington (suburb of Seattle).

Kellie Holloway first attended Camp Odyssey as a camper in the summer of 1997, returned as a Youth Leader in 1998-99, and as a staff member of the multiracial group in 2000.  She hails from Eugene, earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology (minor in Biology) from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, and earned a Doctor of Physical Therapy from A.T. Still University in 2011.  Her long (and rather winding) path of education has returned her to an original decision of physical therapy as a career, but during her 10 long years since moving to Portland in 1999, she continued work as an activist for Youth For Justice in Eugene (a project of CALC, Community Alliance of Lane County), taught middle school and high school girls about domestic violence and self-defense as a teacher for Open Hand, and was also a research assistant for Project Alliance, a long-term study that focuses on the effectiveness of embedding family-based intervention in a public middle school context.  Short trips to Mexico, Korea and Europe during these years taught her an appreciation for the modest upbringing she’d had, and an opportunity to study abroad in Cuenca, Ecuador for 5 months gave her an appreciation for any luxury she’d ever taken for granted.  She was involved in research that explores the cultural competency of physical therapists to examine how the divide between therapist and patient demographics can be narrowed for better healthcare and access.

As with many alumni, Camp was a life-shifting experience for Kellie at age 16.  Little did she know the lasting effects Odyssey would have on her life when she decided to follow up on the announcement about the camp program on the school intercom system – it has proven to be one of the better impulse decisions in life she has made thus far.  For the first time at Camp, ownership of her somewhat-neglected Mexican heritage became an option, as she gained a new appreciation for being a multiracial person.  The continuous learning and humility created at Camp Odyssey continues to propagate itself in her work with folks who have differing physical abilities, having always considered human touch and human feelings paramount in this world of increasing automation and technology.